Disclosed herein, in various embodiments, are stable, high performing nanoparticle compositions as well as processes and devices for making and/or using the same.
Fabrication of electronic circuit elements using liquid deposition techniques may be beneficial as such techniques provide potentially low-cost alternatives to conventional mainstream amorphous silicon technologies for electronic applications such as thin film transistors (TFTs), light-emitting diodes (LEDs), RFID tags, photovoltaics, etc. However, the deposition and/or patterning of functional electrodes, pixel pads, and conductive traces, lines and tracks which meet the conductivity, processing, and cost requirements for practical applications have been a great challenge. The metal, silver, is of particular interest as conductive elements for electronic devices because silver is much lower in cost than gold and it possesses much better environmental stability than copper.
Prior lab-scale methods for producing silver nanoparticles used multiple steps and were laborious and time-consuming. In addition, the resultant product typically manifested as a sticky paste, raising handling issues. Furthermore, the results were not reproducible or easily scaled up. For example, one method produced silver nanoparticles in the presence of oleylamine, then substituted the oleylamine with oleic acid through a ligand exchange process. However, the exchange process is not 100% efficient and the remaining oleylamine can be considered an impurity.
There is therefore a critical need, addressed by embodiments of the present disclosure, for lower cost methods for preparing liquid processable, stable silver-containing nanoparticle compositions that are suitable for fabricating electrically conductive elements of electronic devices.